Rory Mor declared war. He devastated the Trotternish peninsula in the north of Skye, traditionally contested between the two clans. Donald MacDonald retaliated by attacking MacLeod lands on Harris. The cycle continued through 1600. The MacLeods staged a raid into MacDonald territory on North Uist, sending forty men under Donald Glas MacLeod, Rory's cousin, to seize goods that the locals had placed for safety inside the Trinity Temple at Carinish. As the raiders ate breakfast in the church, twelve MacDonalds led by Donald MacIain ic Sheumais of Clan Ranald sprang an ambush. Only two MacLeods survived the Battle of Carinish. Donald Glas was among the dead. On his way back to Skye, Donald MacIain was driven by a storm to take shelter at Rodel in Harris, where Rory MacLeod entertained him without recognising him at first. When the host realised who his guest was, his clansmen tried to burn the MacDonalds' quarters in the night. The MacDonalds left in secret before dawn.

By spring 1601 the feud had become unbearable - cattle stolen, crofts burned, fishermen attacked at sea. Donald MacDonald decided to force a final reckoning. When Rory Mor travelled south to seek help from Archibald Campbell, the 7th Earl of Argyll, Donald launched a full invasion of northern Skye. The stolen cattle were driven south to a traditional raiders' refuge: Coire na Creiche, the corrie of the spoils, on the northern slopes of the Cuillin below the saw-toothed ridge of Bruach na Frithe. The name was already old. Generations of raiders had funnelled stolen herds into this enclosed amphitheatre, which is now better known to walkers as the head of the glen above the Fairy Pools.

MacLeod's brother Alasdair caught up with the raiders at the corrie. The battle began late in the day and continued into the night - an unusual feature in clan warfare, where light failure usually ended fighting. By morning the MacLeods were utterly defeated. Alasdair MacLeod and thirty of his kinsmen had been captured. The corrie that had sheltered cattle now sheltered prisoners. The MacDonalds had pressed home a comprehensive tactical victory in their own backyard, and they knew it. They could have pushed on north toward Dunvegan. They did not. The Privy Council in Edinburgh had been watching the feud with alarm, and the central government - tightening its grip on the Highlands under James VI - was no longer prepared to tolerate private wars.

The Privy Council intervened. MacDonald was ordered to surrender himself to George Gordon, 1st Marquess of Huntly; Rory MacLeod to the Earl of Argyll. Donald MacDonald agreed to release the prisoners. The end of the feud was then celebrated with three weeks of feasting and festivities at Dunvegan Castle - the very seat of the chief whose sister had been the cause of it all. Apart from a brief flare-up in 1603, the two clans never went to war again. Coire na Creiche was the last clan battle on Skye. The era of independent Highland clan warfare was effectively ending; within a generation, the central government would absorb the chiefs into a wider British political order. The corrie itself sits empty now. Walkers pass through it on the way to the Fairy Pools, often without knowing that the green floor beneath them was once piled with stolen cattle and the bodies of MacLeods.